Yak-40 crash near Kyiv

The Yak-40 crash near Kiev was an aviation accident that occurred on the night of Thursday, 23 May 1974 in the vicinity of Kiev. A Yak-40 airliner of the Kirovograd Joint Aviation Detachment of the Aeroflot enterprise was operating scheduled passenger flight N-166 on the route Kovalevo — Khmelnytskyi — Kiev — Kirovograd, but during the approach to Kiev's Zhuliany Airport the airliner deviated from its course to the left, after which, having lost altitude, it crashed into a field of a tank training ground on the outskirts of the village of Horenychi. All 29 people on board — 25 passengers and 4 crew members — were killed.

The official cause of the crash was never determined, but the probable cause was crew incapacitation due to carbon monoxide poisoning.

Crash

At 22:00 the approach controller of Boryspil Airport gave clearance to descend to 1,500 m. When crossing the 1,800 m level, 2 minutes later, he handed over control of the flight to the circuit controller of Zhuliany Airport. At 22:02:11 the circuit controller, at a distance of 23 km, instructed them to take heading 350° to the left (perform the third turn) and report descending to 1,500 m, to which the crew replied: “1500 siyu I have”. At 22:02:21 the controller instructed them to descend to 400 m on aerodrome pressure 730 mm Hg with a right turn of 81° (fourth turn) and to approach using the SP-50. The crew confirmed. When decoding the recording of the radio exchange, it was established that as a result of an “overlap” in the radio communication the information about the pressure of 730 millimetres of mercury was not received. After a brief disappearance of the aircraft's blip on the radar display, in response to the controller's request at 22:03:16 the crew reported having reached an altitude of 500 m. The controller, watching the blip, instructed: “Perform a right turn, take heading 100°, report 400 m”. At 22:03:44 the crew reported: “Reached 400 m, 100°”. According to the circuit controller's testimony, after crossing the landing line the aircraft's blip began to move away to the left. The controller twice gave the command “heading 110° for the fourth turn, at the 11th km”, but the crew did not respond to these instructions and did not answer further calls. The aircraft's blip disappeared.

Soon the destroyed aircraft was found on the territory of a tank training ground near the village of Horenychi in Kiev-Sviatoshyn District, 16 km west of Zhuliany Airport. All 29 people on board were killed. According to eyewitness testimony, it was flying at low altitude with the engines running, descending and with a slight right bank.

At 22:05 Moscow time, flight N-166, with the landing gear and flaps retracted, with a practically zero pitch angle and a slight right bank, on a heading of 32°, with a vertical rate of descent of 3 m/s and an indicated airspeed of about 420 km/h, crashed into a field of a tank training ground 200 metres from the village of Horenychi in Kiev-Sviatoshyn District of Kiev Oblast. On impact the aircraft's right wing panel was partially destroyed. A long tongue of flame from the fuel appeared. Then the airliner flipped over and exploded on striking the ground. All 29 people on board were killed; there were no casualties on the ground.